As Punch stroked our emotional side, we ignored dark lives of macaque monkeys

The pace, the speed, the rush – and amid all this, a warm, heart-wrenching story surfaces; we all can do nothing but stop. To stop and pause a little may seem like a luxury, as we are constantly racing and sometimes neglecting our emotional side. On many occasions, we are guilty of even having one. But Punch, the seven-month-old macaque monkey native to Japan, was that pause we all needed. To the technical ones, it may just be a mere trend.

Emotional trigger point

Again, it was only a trend that made many appreciate the little one and salute his struggle as he expressed his need for his mother, who abandoned him at the time of birth. We acknowledged the fight and resilience he had to show early on in life. The soft toy he has been dragging around also garnered some limelight. It is an Ikea ‘Djungelskog soft toy, orangutan’, priced at $19.99. The soft toy plays the second lead but a pivotal role in Punch’s story, and its now reportedly out of stock in Japan and other countries.

While many have rushed to buy the toy, which is now labelled a bestseller, others in Japan have queued up to catch a glimpse of Punch. The tiny primate is unaware he is making ripples on the internet, and that many think he's ‘cute’.

7 month-old male macaque monkey named Punch Photograph: (Credits: AFP)

PETA says…

"Zoos are not sanctuaries -- they are places where animals are confined, deprived of autonomy, and denied the complex environments and social lives they would have in the wild," People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was quoted by news agency AFP.

"What some are calling 'cute' is actually a glimpse into the trauma of a young, highly social primate coping with isolation and loss," the group's Asia director, Jason Baker, said in a statement.

"Until facilities stop treating sentient beings as attractions, animals like Punch will continue to suffer in captivity," Baker said, calling for Punch to be moved to a "reputable sanctuary, where he could live in a more natural environment".

Victim of illegal trade

But the bigger matter here is that the internet’s favourite also happens to belong to the species of primates, which are victims of laundering due to their forced involvement in biomedical research globally. Macaque monkeys are used in lab experiments and are typically part of the penultimate and crucial round before human trials.

Illegal trade and laundering, which subjects them to harsh treatment, is the usual life for many monkeys like him. Is his presence in the Ichikawa City zoo in Tokyo a boon or a bane? Even in the wild, these monkeys have been captured and used in experiments. Sometimes treated like pests and culled.

According to the European Animal Research Association, “All leading Covid-19 vaccine candidates (Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech, J&J) used rhesus macaques during preclinical testing.”

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has reported that in the last three decades, the population of wild monkeys has declined by 50-70%. This is due to the lab demands, which lead to illegal trade and monkey laundering. These wild macaques are “funneled through breeding farms in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam and exported as captive-bred animals.”

Medical breakthrough

• Monkeys have played an important role in the introduction of antiretroviral therapy in treating AID/HIV. They were involved in the study, which reduced the morbidity and mortality of those infected with HIV.
  
• In Parkinson’s disease, monkeys were used in the research, which led to dopaminergic therapies.
  
• Breast cancer drug Herceptin, which was earlier recommended to nursing mothers, has been reduced as a study showed that the drug was secreted in breast milk.
  
• Antidepressants were developed after research on monkeys led to the initial theory of the cause of depression.